58
PARTISAN REVIEW
free to court Anne, a move that arouses the jealousy and interest of
Wentworth.
Austen's rather heartless observations about the death of Dick
Musgrove and his mother's grief are relevant here. Wentworth sits down
one evening between Anne and Mrs. Musgrove to discuss the unlamented
Dick and hears the bereaved mother's "large fat sighings
over
the destiny
of a son, whom alive nobody had cared for." Flanking Wentworth like
opposed humours are the two grieving women: on one side slender,
pensive Anne, who has spent half her life in mourning, for her mother
and then for Wentworth; on the other fat, jolly Mrs. Musgrove, whose
superficial grief for her son does not interfere at all with her enjoyment
of life. The juxtaposition raises the question of how loss should be
mourned, and how heavy a tribute the living should pay to the dead.
Although the Musgroves are hardly distinguished people, the two
Musgrove households are open and lively. At Uppercross, Anne begins to
revive. The change in her becomes visible at Lyme Regis, where the sea
wind restores "the bloom and freshness of youth." Captain Benwick,
Mr. Elliot, and finally Wentworth himself all notice her attractiveness,
and Anne begins to hope for "a second spring of youth and beauty."
The final stage of her rejuvenation, like Louisa's leap from the Cobb,
occurs at the edge of the sea, the great source and symbol of life, where
the artifices and repressions of society are swept away by the power of
nature and impulse.
At Lyme Anne meets a new set of people, navy friends of
Wentworth, who have some of the life and energy of the sea. Unlike
most of the land people, the navy couples all have happy marriages, with
the wives sharing their husbands' adventurous lives at sea.
In
the navy
folk, Anne sees and regrets what she might have had with Wentworth;
she has to struggle, as so often, against "a great tendency to lowness."
But by now the tide has turned irresistibly in the direction of hope and
renewal; having glimpsed the possibility of happiness, Anne will not let it
escape her a second time.
In
the last section of the novel, when Anne joins her family at Bath,
she is offered a final temptation to return to their sterile way of life by
the proposal of Mr. Elliot, Sir Walter's cousin and the heir to Kellynch.
Lady Russell, predictably arguing in favor of this rather incestuous match,
urges Anne to take her mother's place as mistress of Kellynch: "You are
your mother's self in countenance and disposition .... " For a moment,
Anne herself is "bewitched" by "the idea of becoming what her mother
had been; of having the precious name 'Lady Elliot' first revived in her–
self." But finally she rejects the destructive course of continuing to re-en–
act the dead mother's life.
Mr. Elliot's proposal does give Anne something of great psychologi-
